


Hark!

by scheelite



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Bad Parenting, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, During Canon, Gen, HtN spoilers, Kinda canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29868588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheelite/pseuds/scheelite
Summary: Harrowhark called the spirits of the dead where she could, but the living created gaps in her inventory. Other revenants took the places of the souls still in use. In the body of Judith Deuteros, we find Harrow’s mother, Pelleamena Novenarius.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Hark!

Pelleamena Novenarius had given everything she had to the Ninth. She had killed for it. She had loved for it. She had died for it. Now, with nothing left to give, it was only natural she would find herself on foreign ground. For although she had no idea how she had gotten there, she was definitely no longer in Drearburgh. It was far too sunny.

She raised her arm to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the unwelcome glare. The arm that responded wasn’t Ninth, either. She tugged at the alien white sleeve, appreciating the tensile strength of a jacket still decades from disintegration. This was new. She looked down at the Cohort insignia, among other badges, on her lapel, gently twisting them in wonder. These were also new. She was too tall; she was too young. This was neither her body nor her clothing.

She surveyed the area with a wary curiosity. The sky was blue. She saw a semicircle of spacecraft, each accompanied by a pair of people, arranged around the lush yard of a great, decrepit mansion—and it was all agonizingly bright.

She had never trusted brightness. Darkness implied mystery; it was reasonable, then, when it concealed horrors. Light was a fool’s distraction, and it gave her a headache. Seeking a respite, her eyes were drawn to the nearest shade. While the inky blotch’s robes and skull were instantly recognizable to Pelleamena, it took an extra beat to recognize her daughter beneath them. Harrowhark, the gloomy speck, seemed unchanged from her memory. Her robe was the same garment she had worn to formal services as the ten-year-old Reverend Daughter. As always, her skull was impeccably painted. Beside her stood Ortus, who had aged more visibly—the poor man looked almost decrepit.

So this was the future, or a stimulation of it. Since Harrowhark’s height was largely unchanged, Pellemena judged her to be about thirteen. She shuddered. A thirteen-year-old who had unleashed God’s One Enemy and refused to die for it was a landmine. Some trampling idiot was sure to set her off. And one glance at her company revealed the presence of _multiple_ such idiots. The solution to this potentially explosive situation was simple: Harrowhark needed disarming. The Emperor had never elaborated on the nature of the Apocalypse; for all she knew, Harrowhark was the catalyst. Even if she wasn’t, it seemed wrong for the harbinger of Death to be alive herself. Pelleamena wasn’t sure yet if her priority was to punish or to prevent Harrowhark’s actions, but it didn’t matter—her path would be identical with either motivation.

However, she could do nothing while half-blind. She started towards the great house to her left, but another white-sheathed arm soon blocked her path. This one’s owner was a Cohort cavalier, looking at her with concern. “Wait,” the arm-owning woman muttered, nodding towards a descending shuttle. It would be impolite to plot filicide before the other guests arrived. Noting the other woman’s severe posture, Pelleamena puffed out her chest a little. It wouldn’t hurt to play along.

Once seated inside Canaan House, she pretended to sip her tea. One look at the steaming dark beverage had told her it was too hot, too strong. She had no desire to assault her tongue with this scalding, spicy water. She couldn’t understand why, when finally shaded from Dominicus’s fire, these people still desired second-degree burns. It was lunacy. Watching Harrowhark struggle with her own cup was gratifying. At least one of her companions had sense.

Ortus began the prayers. Her cavalier, already suspicious of her aversion to tea, narrowed her eyes as she scrabbled for prayer bones that weren’t there.

 _I pray the tomb is shut forever_.

Pelleamena took a deep breath, slowly massaging her hand’s living knuckles in replacement. Although these bones belonged to the wrong house, the familiarity was comforting.

_I pray the rock is never rolled away._

Bones were bones, no matter the owner. Prayers were prayers, no matter the hypocrisy within. The rock had been rolled away. It was rather too late for these pleas to have effect.

_I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain…_

She prayed. These remaining lines still held some truth. She hoped her daughter was not using the litany as a checklist, invalidating line by line until the world crumbled. When Ortus finished, she gulped down the horrible tea. Hopefully, her grimace had been subtle.

* * *

Marta the Second collected the key ring and sat down beside her adept. Captain Deuteros had been acting strangely since they landed. She kept stealing glances at the Ninth. This alone was understandable—the Ninth were famously reclusive—but there were other oddities. Her posture was funny, like that of a child playing soldier. She was rubbing her knuckles with a strange fervour. Plus, her tea had seemed to offend her, although it was the standard Cohort brew. As Marta couldn’t display anything apart from rigid Second conduct in public, she filed away her concerns for later. The two women had fought together for years. Whatever the problem, she trusted Judith to ask for help when she needed it.

* * *

The woman—Marta—offered Pelleamena the key ring, which she refused. They had been given to the cavaliers for some purpose, one that she didn’t intend to disrupt, and she not yet sure of the proper etiquette around cavaliers. The Ninth House hadn’t had a proper one in generations. It was better to be cautious. Besides, necromancers had no use for locks when wards would do. Keys were muggles’ toys, and she had no real interest in this morbid little game. Her focus was on her daughter.

She was no match yet for Harrowhark, but thankfully there seemed no better place to study necromancy than Canaan House. Chambers of books were dedicated to the subject. Since Harrowhark’s bone magic had been unparalleled even at age ten, Pelleamena desperately needed a crash course in flesh and spirit theorems, or it would all be for naught. She needed to expand her range to make up for her lacking depth.

She studied alone in the library. Marta had understood her request for space. No questions were asked, even after Teacher had warned against travelling alone; the Second’s cavalier-necromancer bond had been strong before Pelleamena’s intrusion. For this she was grateful, as she hoped to spend the afternoon undisturbed. She wedged herself behind a bookshelf and read, hidden from others who might use the space, discovering the intricacies of cartilage.

After barely three hours, she was abruptly interrupted by a booming voice from another corner of the room. All earlier chatter had been muffled, but the words now roared too loud to ignore:

_“Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder’d his voice as_

_the black sea roars on the tomb-gate of Algol,_

_“Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the_

_Emperor’s corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told_

_them—”_

Pelleamena silently thanked her daughter for stopping _The Noniad_ from continuing. She snuck closer to the voices, peeking through a gap between books. The Fifth and Ninth Houses were discussing poetry. Half-listening, she took this opportunity to examine her daughter. Harrowhark looked a bit taller now that she wasn’t standing immediately beside Ortus. The destroyer of the Ninth House was perhaps fifteen. She had survived five years, then, after opening the Tomb. Pelleamena couldn’t fathom how life could continue for so long after such blasphemy. It had been the end of the Ninth, but its people had somehow continued. Ridiculous.

“I say, Reverend Daughter, is it an ancestral Locked Tomb tradition for your spirit energy to be so diverse?” she heard the Fifth necromancer say. “I’ve counted up to one hundred and fifty signatures contributing to you, and there’s more—they’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means…”

Only the inconvenience of her hiding-spot stopped her from killing the woman then and there. The survival of the Ninth House depended on keeping that secret. It had been hard enough to live with such reminders as the Gideon child. She was already a monster; one more murder would hardly leave a stain. As much as she respected Abigail Pent, she had to admit that "historian" was a useless profession. The loss would have barely been noticeable. How dare she remind her of her sins? Harrowhark, a prodigious necromancer at point-blank range, somehow held herself back. Pelleamena marvelled at the necessary self-control. As her daughter stormed out, she wondered at this trait’s implications. Opening the Tomb could not have been done on impulse. Why, then? She hadn’t bothered to consider this in the moments before her death. She had simply dismissed Harrowhark as a petulant fool with more power than sense.

At the time, Harrowhark’s motivation hadn’t mattered. There had hardly been time to be angry. With the Tomb opened, the Ninth House’s sole purpose had been lost. The imminent apocalypse had left them hopeless; the only control to be found had been in their own deaths. Now, in a situation certainly lacking control, Pelleamena craved it. Canaan housed too many unknowns. Why was she here?

Pelleamena managed to sweep aside her discontent for the next few hours as she continued her study. Necromantic theorems were thankfully emotionless; no matter the adept’s inner turmoil, they predictably yielded the anticipated results. When the library finally emptied and words began to crawl, unheeded, around the page, Pelleamena crawled out of her hiding-spot with as much grace as she could muster and set off to find the Second-designated sleeping chambers.

With an otherwise empty mind, her thoughts returned to Abigail’s reminder. Surely, since the most heinous crimes are always inspired by like acts, Primhark and Pelleamena’s genocide was to blame for the tomb’s breach. No matter their culpability, though, they had paid.

* * *

Instead of going through the hatch alone, Marta trailed the kids from the Fourth. They allowed it, for The Sleeper was putting everyone on edge. There was an incongruous feeling about them, as if the coffin was out of place even among the eccentricities of Canaan House. She had felt compelled to protect Isaac and Jeannemary. The teens had let her tag along. There was a familiarity between their two houses; although they had never met in person, she had heard of them, and they of her. She had been given Cohort instruction to assess them for future duty anyway, and their corpses would be useless to the Empire. It was a matter of service to the King Undying. Nothing else.

Later, she returned to the Second’s quarters to find the Captain pacing with a nervous energy she had never shown before.

“We need to talk,” announced her necromancer.

Agreed.

* * *

Pelleamena considered what to tell her cavalier. If she told the truth, would some divine force realize their mistake and kick her out? She wasn’t ready to leave. As with her past life, she wanted to depart from Canaan House on her own terms. She would avoid the matter of her identity, then, at least for now.

“What do you think the Emperor is doing?” she asked. It was an important, yet innocuous enough question.

Marta paused, thrown off by her bluntness. “He runs His Empire,” she responded simply. What greater explanation would his soldiers need?

“No, with”—Pelleamena gestured to their surroundings—“Canaan House.”

“Oh.” This was more familiar territory; she had been wondering this herself earlier. “I’m not sure. It’s almost like this isn’t how it— I mean, putting potential Lyctors in life-threatening situations cannot be a productive strategy.”

Pelleamena nodded absentmindedly. She had no real interest in Lyctorhood. Of course, being a saint of the Necrolord Prime would be legendary, but she was dead. Also, the Second House had little use for a Lyctor. They were already powerful. The Ninth’s need was more desperate. Unfortunately, they were also the least-deserving house; at least, she was fairly certain none of the others had sinned as grievously. Her house was indisputably rotten. Plus, if Anastasia hadn’t deserved Lyctorhood, neither did she.

That night, she had trouble sleeping. Even in marriage, Pelleamena had always had a cell alone to rest in. She wasn’t used to a cavalier’s snores. She eventually managed to drift off by mirroring the other woman’s breaths, using them as a metronome to pace her own.

Breathe in, stop; breathe out, stop. Repeat.

The next morning, she awoke before dawn, despite her unproductive sleep, and watched the sun rise through the oversized window. She sat up in her bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping cavalier. Even she had to admit that the weak light of the sunrise was attractive; however, a soft beeping soon disturbed her reverie. Rubbing loveliness and sleep from her eyes, she scooted off the bed, looking for the source of the noise. Each bleep was somehow shriller and more insistent than the last. Pelleamena tentatively backed against the wall, and a quiet grumbling soon joined the cacophony. Just as she was about to evacuate, an arm emerged from the cavalier’s cot to slap a book-sized box on the bedside table. The beeping stopped, and Lieutenant Dyas got up, stretching. Her eyes fell on the jacket on Pelleamena’s arms.

“Going anywhere?” she yawned.

“I thought we could get a head start,” fumbled Pelleamena.

Marta buckled on her scabbard, nodding seriously. “Let’s get breakfast, then.”

At the insistence of her cavalier, Pelleamena nibbled on the crusts of an untoasted slice of bread, silently cursing her foolishness. She had hoped to return to her studies this morning, but her unfamiliarity with alarm clocks had been her downfall.

“What did you find yesterday?” she asked Marta, hoping to distract the other woman from her lack of appetite.

“I went with Chatur and Tettares into the facility,” the Lieutenant explained over a plate of eggs. “Inside, different labs house different trials, each involved in a step to Lyctorhood. I’m not yet certain. The tests seem to require both necromancer and cavalier. I could not attempt any alone, and the teens would not let me watch.”

Pelleamena pushed away her breadcrumbs and stood up. “Shall we give it a go, then?” The endeavour seemed inevitable, but she would rather not force anything more into her unwelcoming stomach before it began.

Marta scooped up the last of her eggs, passing both plates to a waiting construct. Pelleamena took a second to admire the skeleton’s dexterity. The complexity of the necessary theorem was something she wished she could be studying at the moment. She sighed, following her cavalier out.

As they marched down the hall, Pelleamena realized that perhaps the secret behind her un-death was hidden in the trials. It was certainly more likely hidden there than in some unusually nimble bones. And even if achieving Lyctorhood was impossible for her, there were doubtless many powerful necromantic theorems hidden in these labs. Perhaps she had been foolish not to enter them earlier, alone. Perhaps she had been blinded by Ninth business. In her defence, none of the other houses were interesting enough to have initiated Armageddon. The Ninth was not like the other houses.

They caught the pair from this most beguiling house exiting the catacombs despite the early hour. Ortus and Harrowhark swiftly locked the trapdoor beneath them and hastened away, even as they saw the Second approach. “Rude,” Marta muttered beside her, but Pelleamena probably would have done the same. The Ninth was a self-absorbed house, despite their apparent piety. Ortus and Harrowhark swished past them without a glance in their direction, although Ortus gave them a small, serene nod in acknowledgement.

Briefly up close, her daughter looked older still. She was still a good head shorter than Judith, but her face shape seemed lengthened. She looked more mature, either from age or circumstance. Harrowhark resembled a seventeen-year-old version of her mother. How ghastly! Had it really been seven years since the tomb incident? That was an unpleasantly long delay for an apocalypse. What—No—The Emperor had promised death, so death was inevitable. It always had been.

Did it really matter, then, if Pelleamena left her young doppelganger alive? They were all already either dead or dying. Marta would inevitably die on a battlefield; Pelleamena was dead herself. And if Harrowhark had somehow been possessed by the Enemy to be an Antichrist, Pelleamena didn’t doubt that this force would be dogged enough to consume another. It had been seven years, after all. The damage done by her family must be irreversible by now—it already was, for the two hundred sacrificed. The time for action had passed, anyway: the pair was already far behind them.

Pelleamena took a shaky breath. Up ahead, Lieutenant Dyas was unlocking the trapdoor. She jogged to catch up, descending the ladder after her cavalier. She was ready to learn why she was here, and hopefully learn some Lyctoral secrets along the way, though she could no longer find a greater motivation than simple curiosity. Perhaps an answer or two was in these catacombs.

On a whim, they entered laboratory two. They were, after all, supposed to be from the Second House. Before they entered, Pelleamena carefully warded the doorway with blood and bone at the Lieutenant's suggestion. Inside the laboratory’s chamber were two metal doors, marked Response and Imaging. Next to the Response-labelled door was a plex screen, revealing a view of an empty room. Marta gave this door a gentle push. “Locked,” she noted. She gave it another shove to be sure. It stayed shut. Pelleamena slowly approached the door opposite—Imaging—, which swung open automatically with a hiss. She beckoned Marta over, and they entered the room one by one.

The room was more of a closet, really, and it was crowded with old machinery. All the equipment seemed too decrepit to function, except for a pedestal in the center. It was untarnished, shining with light reflected from the open doorway. Pelleamena lightly ran her hand over the dark surface, afraid of breaking it.

Suddenly, without warning, a plex cage closed over her hand. The door shut with a _thump_ , sending the room to near-darkness. She drew back her trapped hand reflexively, slamming her metacarpals against the hard cage’s roof. The cage shrank away, and the room returned to just dimness as the door opened. There was another, more muffled _thump_ , which was strange—doors banged closed, not open. Gingerly, she tried again, this time pressing her full palm into the plaque. _Thump_. Darkness.

She tapped Marta’s shoulder with her free hand. “Could you peek through the window?” she whispered. Marta hurried over, clipping her shoulder on a large metal thing in the blackness that went crashing to the floor—she was less accustomed to moving in shadow than Pelleamena. They both froze, reminded of the Sleeper. After a terrified few seconds, however, nothing changed, and Marta peered through the opening.

“The Response door’s opened,” she noted, not bothering to whisper anymore. The crash would have already alerted all nearby malicious beings to their presence. Pelleamena released the control panel. _Thump_. “Closed again. Should I try to enter while you work the panel?”

They had solved their first mystery: the source of the second thump. Pelleamena was no longer thinking about her House or her strange situation. She had a puzzle to solve. “We should run a few more tests,” she began. “It might be trapped. I don’t want to risk you getting hurt. I’ll send in a bone construct first, and you can watch from the middle room. Then, we'll reassess.” 

Lieutenant Dyas nodded, blushing slightly. Back in the light of the main room, Pelleamena produced a bone-chip from her jacket pocket and effortlessly extrapolated from it until a full-grown skeleton stood in front of them. Marta looked taken aback by her unexpected proficiency, but she said nothing of it. Pelleamena returned to Imaging.

Like before, she placed her hand on the panel. _Thump_. Darkness. She then blindly commanded her construct forwards into Response. “It’s in,” she heard Marta shout from the next room. _Thump_. That must have been the Response door closing; a second later, another bark from Marta confirmed this. She willed the skeleton to walk the room’s perimeter but found she couldn’t, as her thanergetic connection was abruptly cut off. At the same time, she heard a rumble and the horrible sound of crunching bones from an intercom connected to the Response room. Her hand left the platform. _Thump_. She rushed back to find her cavalier staring through the window, mouth agape at an empty room.

“It was…” Marta glanced once more around the room to confirm the threat was gone. “It was huge. Half the room was filled with bones. There was no hope for Buster. They squished him and disappeared.” She drove her fist into her palm, demonstrating their dummy’s fate. “I think the challenge here is for the cavalier to fight the beast.”

Pelleamena paced, thinking. “Are you sure?”

“What else would the trial be?”

Pelleamena ran her fingers through her hair, recoiling when she found an unexpected texture. “But what do I do? There’s got to be more to this challenge than a swordfight. What about the adept?”

Marta grinned wickedly. “Make me an army.”

Pelleamena did a quick mental calculation. That would work. “As you say, Lieutenant.”

So Pelleamena built an army. Brute force was not always the most elegant solution, but she had never been one for subtlety—she had killed 200 children in exchange for an heir because adoption made too much sense. She had despised sneaking around. She was ready to produce carnage.

Her constructs were beautifully dangerous. Her earlier study made them so. She imbued them with thanergy and called partial revenants to them, mirroring the theorems that had made Canaan House’s servants. The spirits had come more readily than expected, but she took it with pride as a mark of aptitude. And unlike her last great invention (her daughter), she had complete control over them. Half-faded revenants simply lacked the agency to rebel. It was wickedly clever. She bound the bones together with sinews and cushioned them with fat. She now had ten perfect soldiers, nine fabricated and one human, made of bone, flesh, and spirit. Triumphant, she fainted.

An indeterminate amount of time later, she woke up for the second time that day. She had been rolled onto her back and had a crumpled Cohort jacket for a pillow. Her legs were elevated on an abandoned ribcage, encouraging blood flow to her brain. Whoever had set her up like this was clearly well-accustomed to the often-fainting necromancer. She kicked away the ribcage and propped herself up on her elbows. Marta, crouched jacketless in the corner, caught her eye and threw her a packet of nutrient paste. “Welcome back,” she grinned.

Invigorated by nutrient paste, which tasted—tastelessly—like Drearburgh, Pelleamena stood up. She shook the dust off of Marta’s jacket and handed it back. Marta gave Pelleamena a once-over and nodded to herself, pleased with the flush returning to her cheeks. “Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Pelleamena responded, carefully folding the empty snack wrapper into her pocket. She quickly examined her impeccable soldiers still standing at attention. “Are you ready, kid?”

Marta saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

They each went to their places. Marta was poised to strike with her troops, and Pelleamena was in Imaging, calling out her final instructions. “The moment you are in trouble,” she commanded through the intercom, “shout out and I’ll release you. No heroics. We can try again.” After hearing Marta’s affirmative, she smacked her hand down on the touchpad. _Thump_.

And so their attempt would have begun, only the noise continued to echo:

 _Thump_.

 _Thump_.

 _Thump_.

It was getting louder and louder, and, like the alarm clock, she had no idea of the source. Sounds of Marta’s engagement still rang through the walls.

_Thump._

_Thump._

She flipped off the intercom between the rooms, checking to see if it was feedback from that. Nope.

 _Thump_.

Then, the door burst open, blinding her with a harsh light. Silhouetted in the doorway was a figure that was almost human, but not quite. Although it was bipedal, it had a bulbous, neckless head and orange skin. It also had a gun, which was pointed towards her.

_Bang._

The shot was headed straight to her heart. Instinctively, she called up a great column of cartilage. The bullet clattered uselessly to the floor.

_Bang._

_Bang_.

There was no hesitancy in the shooter. The bullets kept coming.

 _Bang_.

_Bang._

_Bang_.

Now, with six cartilage-stalks sticking out her front, she felt like a backwards, but still living, porcupine. Again, she was grateful for her earlier study of flesh magic. Bone would have shattered and drained too much energy in conjuring.

_Click._

Her hunter was out of bullets. Pelleamena kept her hand glued to the panel behind her, unwilling to expose Marta to the Sleeper. The figure, who she could now see was a human in a haz suit, approached, allowing Pelleamena to peer through their plex mask. It was no great shock to her that the face she saw belonged to a dead body. She was dead herself. What was surprising was that even though she had only seen the corpse once, eleven—or was it eighteen?—years ago, she recognized her. It was Gideon Nav’s mother.

“Clever,” mocked Mama Nav. “But you haven’t retaliated yet. Are you _sure_ you belong to the Second House?” She was toying with Pelleamena, like a child playing with their food, certain that dinner wouldn’t strike back. “It doesn’t matter.” She reloaded her rifle. “Now shoo, revenant, so I can handle your summoner.”

Pelleamena didn’t know how many more shots she could block. A speeding bullet’s energy was a significant amount to dissipate alone. She could feel the blood sweat trickling down her collar. She needed to recuperate; she needed to distract the woman.

She tried the name the Sleeper had screamed so long ago: the name they had given to her progeny. “Gideon?”

It was the first thing that had come to mind, but it worked. The other revenant’s face hardened. Her rifle’s barrel drooped.

“Where did you learn that name, child?” she said coldly. Pelleamena took no offence; Judith was many decades younger than her.

“I pried those words out of you long ago.”

“But—oh, you’re Ninth. Nice body,” sneered the Sleeper.

“Who’s Gideon?”

The Sleeper grimaced, re-aiming her rifle at Pelleamena’s chest. Pelleamena tried a different line of questioning. “Who are you?”

“The Emperor’s Downfall, but my friends call me Wake.”

 _Bang_.

This shot was more out of boredom than any serious homicidal attempt. The Emperor’s Downfall was quickly losing interest in the hunt, which was unfortunate for her prey.

“Any other questions?”

Pelleamena shrugged. She had never encountered a heretic before. Even as the Reverend Mother of the Ninth, it was like she had been living under the same rock as The Body. She had been sheltered from any knowledge of an outside uprising, and the Ninth was too pious to tolerate any in-house riots. She could ask the Sleeper for the details of her location and her summoning, but she was beginning to form a theory of her situation on her own. As she was not the only dead soul, they were likely in the River. They had been brought here, to a River eddy with enforced physical laws, to playact a certain situation for reasons yet uncertain. As for their bidder, all signs pointed to Harrowhark. Who else would call her, Pelleamena, even on accident? And that meant—

Was her husband here? Maybe he was in the body of the gangly Sixth-house boy. Maybe not. Pelleamena doubted she’d live—or continue to exist in her current state of limbo—long enough to check.

She exhaled. If she was going to die, she might as well do so with the litany of the Locked Tomb on her lips. The Ninth House would take her second death as well, only she would omit the lines that her daughter had made irrelevant seven years before.

She began: “I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain.”

The Sleeper scoffed.

“I pray it lives, I pray it—”

_Bang._

Another quill sprouted from Pelleamena’s torso. “Will you stop that?” moaned the Sleeper. “Can’t you see the inconsistency in the ways of the Ninth? You worship the Body yet ally with the Emperor. It’s borderline heretical. The Emperor deceives you, of course, but I’d sooner kill you than explain.”

Pelleamena was a researcher. She had invented a method to conceive a necromancer on a barren planet. When she had first dreamt of the plan, her husband had found it insane. The process had been too inconceivable at first to be even considered unethical. But eventually Primhark and she had perfected the recipe for one (1) Harrowhark despite the odds. Science didn’t dismiss theories until they had been unquestionably rebuffed; neither did she. And so, inside her, logic and faith waged war; _The Emperor deceives you._ There was a chance the Sleeper was correct, yet she could not be, not according to the Ninth. The Locked Tomb wouldn’t allow it.

But the Locked Tomb had been opened. Its vestal power had diminished. Pelleamena had no desire to agonize over it any longer. As in her first death, she just wanted to float away in the River, letting go while she still could.

But last time, instead of letting her die quietly, Harrowhark had pulled her here. She was oddly proud of her daughter in that moment, on the path to Lyctorhood despite her monstrosity. She was oddly proud of herself, too, for conceiving that monstrosity. In this bubble of the River, her daughter was Sovereign. And here she was, facing her own Armageddon, as promised.

Thanks, Harrow—

With an idle flick of her wrist, the Sleeper manipulated physical law around Pelleamena. The bullets accelerated; the cartilage crumbled. Pelleamena's hand slipped off the control panel and she fell to the floor.

_Thump._

—hark!

The sleeper was her Antichrist, but there was no means to overthink it anymore.

Back to the River.

***

The great construct that Marta was fighting disappeared, along with her allies. Friends and enemies alike crumbled, becoming dust. Strangely, Captain Deuteros hadn’t given any warning of this ceasefire over the intercom. Marta coolly sheathed her rapier and strolled back towards Imaging.

The door opposite her had fallen inward. In between, the floor was littered with broken wards and bloody bootprints.

 _Judith_.

A rush of orange flashed by. Before she could begin to process it, she was in pursuit, rapier drawn and knife in her offhand: a tripping hazard, but she was old enough to run with blades.

***

Judith Deuteros lay on the floor, riddled with bullets. Her jacket was red. Marta kneeled next to her, scooping up her necromancer’s frail body, and stood. Her coat was turning red now, too, but there was no comfort in the conformity. Judith and she were no longer on the same team. One was dead and one was not. It was indisputable.

_But wasn’t she also dead? Stabbed in the abdomen?_

No—she was quite certain she was alive. Death would have freed her from Canaan House. Cradling her necromancer in her arms, she stepped over broken wards and exited the lab. She had to find someone—anyone—and warn them.

She wandered, leaving a trail of gore, looking for the Fourth kids again. They were the most familiar out of the present ensemble—Isaac shared the sensibility, uncharacteristic of his house, of the Captain; he would know what to do. The Cohort would honour him for it, as they had honoured Judith. And Judith could not die again. Marta Dyas needed to protect Issac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur, only she could not find them.

***

Abigail Pent, led by bloody footprints as if they were Ariadne’s yarn through the Labyrinth, found Lieutenant Dyas near the cafeteria. The corpse, led by Abigail, found another bed. And Pelleamena’s daughter performed her mother’s autopsy for a second time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This was a really fun idea to play with, but someone else can write the Primhark-as-Camilla sequel.
> 
> I'm sorry about that one Spongebob reference. The opportunity was too perfect.


End file.
